Written by Josh Boynton.
Image credit: 二二八和平公園 228 Peace Park – panoramio by lienyuan lee/ Wikimedia Commons, license: CC BY 3.0
Following the defeat of the Qing Empire and the Treaty of Shimonoseki, the Republic of Formosa was founded as an independent bastion of resistance against Japanese rule. While the Republic of Formosa only lasted six months in 1895, it planted a permanent seed of Taiwanese identity, which would be symbolic of Taiwan’s future.
When most people think of Taiwan today, they think of a vibrant democracy or a global semiconductor producer. While Taiwan stands as a democracy today, this was not always the case. In 1945, following the end of Japanese colonial rule, the KMT under Chiang Kai-Shek would head the Republic of China. During the exodus of refugees from the Mainland, the new arrivals, known as Waishengren, quickly took control of the government, military, and education systems, while the Benshengren (local Taiwanese) were largely barred from holding political power. These tensions would amount to disastrous events that would strain relations between the Taiwanese government and its people, such as the 228 incident. This led to the period of the White Terror. At this time, the KMT imposed decades of martial law in order to enforce a Chinese identity upon the people. Use of the Taiwanese language and political dissent were suppressed, and a new version of Chinese nationalism was promoted. This version of nationalism portrayed Taiwan as a temporary base of operations from which the ROC would one day reconquer the mainland and be one China once again.
The transition to democracy in the late 1980s/1990s led to a stark change in this enforced belief. The lifting of martial law in 1987, the legalisation of opposition parties, and the eventual move to direct presidential elections in 1996 did not simply transform Taiwan’s political institutions. These changes also transformed how the people of Taiwan saw themselves. Taiwan’s democratic transition fundamentally reshaped the self-perception of the people who live on the island, giving rise to a distinct Taiwanese identity that now plays a critical role in the debate over the island’s future. Polling data provided by the Election Study Centre from the past three decades clearly shows that the population has shifted away from identifying as Chinese, or as both Chinese and Taiwanese, and now overwhelmingly identifies as Taiwanese.
One major reason for this shift is that the public opinion of Chiang Kai-shek today is reflective of his rule. A 2020 Redfield & Wilton survey found that roughly half of Taiwanese respondents are split on Chiang’s legacy, while only about a third of voters, mostly Han, view him positively. The fact that he is no longer universally celebrated speaks to the way democracy opened space for the Taiwanese people to reckon with their own history rather than accept the officially curated KMT narrative.
Democratisation did more than just change how Taiwan was governed. It allowed the people of Taiwan, for the first time in modern history, to publicly express who they thought they were. Under the KMT, the official ruling was that everyone on the island was Chinese, and that Taiwanese identity, language, and history were irrelevant and actively dangerous. Once that suppression was lifted, the local culture, history, and languages that had been pushed underground for decades came back into a new renaissance. Schools began teaching Taiwanese history, the Hokkien and Hakka languages were normalised in public life, and indigenous communities were officially recognised.
The most prominent pieces of evidence of this identity shift are documented by Li Zhang in their 2016 election analysis. In the first year of the 2016 study, only about 17.6 per cent of respondents identified as exclusively Taiwanese, while around 25.5 percent identified as exclusively Chinese, and the largest group, around 46.4 percent, identified as both. By 2024, the picture had completely reversed. Over 60 per cent of respondents now identified as exclusively Taiwanese, while those identifying as Chinese had collapsed to just over 2 per cent.
Here, we can see a pattern that is not just a small or gradual change, but instead it is a generational transformation that happened alongside and as a direct result of democratisation. Taiwan’s continued democratisation created a new social and political experience that, over time, solidified into a unique Taiwanese identity. The Taiwanese, living in a free democratic society and watching China remain authoritarian, gave Taiwanese people an identity that is not just ethnic or cultural. The Taiwanese identity is also political, standing against dictatorship, communism, martial law, and other tyrannical systems. Being Taiwanese came to mean being democratic, and being democratic came to mean being not Chinese.
The 2016 victory of the DPP under Tsai Ing-wen and her even larger re-election in 2020 suggest that this identity shift is not a temporary emotion. This is a long-term shift and a realignment of Taiwanese political consciousness.
The generational differences make this even clearer. The shift is solidified by the younger Taiwanese, who have grown up in a free society and have no memory of authoritarian rule. They identify as Taiwanese at much higher rates than older generations. They have no lived connection to the mainland, no Chinese Civil War memories, and no room for the idea that they are anything other than Taiwanese. This generational divide ensures that the pattern will likely continue, regardless of which party is in power.
This shift has fundamentally changed the debate over Taiwan’s future. The PRC’s vision of willing unification grows further out of reach with each generation. Now, the Taiwanese themselves favour a cautious centrism that protects their de facto sovereignty without inviting open conflict. Carlos Pascual of the Brookings Institute argued that Taiwan’s democratic system has acted as a moderating force, shaping a centrist consensus to defer ultimate questions like unification or independence. That moderation is paradoxically the most stable thing about the Taiwan Strait. It is also a product of the very democratisation that gave rise to Taiwanese identity in the first place.
In conclusion, the decades of the KMT-imposed notion of Chinese identity simply could not survive in a free society where people were finally able to express their own history, language, and political values. The result is a population that strongly identifies as Taiwanese, values its democratic institutions, and wants to preserve its current way of life.
Looking ahead, the question is not really whether Taiwanese identity will continue to grow. The data and the generational trends suggest it will. The real question is how Beijing, Washington, and Taipei will manage a situation in which the people of Taiwan increasingly do not see themselves as part of any larger Chinese political project. The longer this identity holds and deepens, the harder peaceful unification becomes, and the more important it becomes for all parties involved to recognise that the future of Taiwan will, ultimately, be decided by the Taiwanese themselves.
Joshua Boynton is a senior at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, specialising in the study of international relations and how non-state actors affect such relations.
This article was published as part of the special issue on ‘George Mason Class 2026’.